Publisher Bets on Big Collectible Books

While many book publishers are heavily investing in the digital frontier, Benedikt Taschen is looking to corner the market in oversize collectible books.

His Cologne, Germany-based publishing house, Taschen, collaborated with Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photojournalist and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador who spent the past eight years traveling to remote places untouched by deforestation, urbanization and the modern world, to produce "Genesis." The 704-page two-volume collection of black-and-white photos depicts Mr. Salgado's trek, which included a 47-day journey tracking 7,000 reindeer across Northern Siberia and a roughly 525-mile hike in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.

Mr. Taschen said "Genesis" marks the most production and marketing resources his publishing house has put toward any one title, although he declined to disclose the budget.

Mr. Taschen is no stranger to gigantic books. In 1999 his company published "SUMO" by photographer Helmut Newton, which weighed 78 pounds. While the book originally retailed for $1,500, copy number one of "SUMO" sold at a Berlin auction in 2000 for $430,000. Taschen only published 10,000 copies.

The art edition of "Genesis," of which there are 500 leather-bound copies, will include a signed print (clients can choose from five different photographs) and a custom-made stand from Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

A collector's edition, with a 2,500 print run, will be bound in leather with a cloth cover and include the stand but not a print, for $3,000. Both versions are expected to arrive in Taschen's 11 world-wide stores in mid-June. They are currently available for preorder and the price will rise $1,000 on each version June 15. Roughly half of the large format versions have been purchased.

There is also a $70 coffee table edition, which has been translated in Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese. That version has sold roughly 300,000 copies abroad and is on its third print run. It hit U.S. bookshelves on May 1.

To market the twin volumes, Taschen is selling T-shirts, tote bags, diaries and posters—the book publisher's first nonbook products in its 33-year history—to accompany Mr. Salgado's 23-city global traveling exhibition of roughly 250 "Genesis" photographs. The exhibition opened on Saturday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

From the "Genesis" products, Mr. Taschen said he is creating a nonbook merchandising division within his privately owned publishing house.

"Around 46% of the planet is how it was the day of genesis, in the beginning," said Mr. Salgado, who is based in Paris and turned 69 in February. "I am telling the story I saw," the former economist said about the pristine places he photographed.

To reach a younger, more digital savvy crowd of collectors, the publisher is offering the "Genesis" art edition for purchase May 28 on 1stdibs, an online marketplace.

Mr. Taschen said he spent a decade on "Genesis," the longest amount of time he has ever dedicated to a project. Five of those years were used designing and editing the book with Mr. Salgado's wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado. Because Mr. Salgado switched from medium format film to digital black-and-white cameras midway through his eight-year journey, Mr. Taschen and Mrs. Salgado had to reformat the book.

Taschen publishes about 100 titles per year, each of which must be approved by Mr. Taschen himself. Recently, Taschen and the Rolling Stones signed a deal to produce the band's official tribute book.

"So many books are disposable from the start, not designed to become significant objects," said Mr. Taschen. He said he hopes to publish books that last, adding that "to do that you have to spend a lot of care and love and money too, but numbers only go so far."

—For more media and entertainment news, go to wsj.com/speakeasy

Corrections & Amplifications German publishing company Taschen is 33 years old. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the company had a 28-year history.

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